Journalist + Filmmaker

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Asha Siad is an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker. A passionate multimedia storyteller, Asha shares under-reported stories that expand the dialogue around pressing issues and allow people to connect with the world in a more meaningful way. She has reported for Shaw TV, CBC News and Frontiere News. Asha co-produced Living at the Border, a web documentary that shares the realities of African migrants and asylum-seekers in Italy. The project won the Amnesty International Canada Media Award for Best Online Journalism in 2014.

From interviewing the former President of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, about the unbearable living conditions many Somali asylum-seekers face in Italy to reporting on the plight of South Sudanese diaspora in Canada, she looks for global and local stories that allow us to connect with the rest of the world. She co-directed Beyond the Silence, a documentary that explores the silences around breast cancer in several ethnic communities in Canada. Asha presented and produced New Beginnings, a documentary series that follows the lives of everyday Canadians on Shaw TV. Asha produced Reserving Identities, a special report that examines issues relating to Aboriginal communities through the lens of its young people.

Asha received the Images and Voices of Hope 2015 Award of Appreciation for showing a commitment to constructive change and amplifying hope through media. In 2016, she was honored by the Alberta Council for Global Cooperation as one of the Top 30 young people working towards a just and sustainable future.

Asha’s latest documentary film for the National Film Board of Canada called 19 Days reveals the human side of the refugee resettlement process. Asha was recently in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina providing multimedia journalism training to Bosnian youth and empowering them to share their own stories through the Mostar Summer Youth Programme.